


Wither

by LadyOfTheOldWorld



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Blood, Depression, Disordered Eating, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, F/M, Gen, Insomnia, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Ui Koori, Other, POV Third Person Limited, Passive Suicidality, Post-Rose Extermination Operation, Present Tense, Semi-Canon Compliant, The ship's more one-sided than anything I'm sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-09 00:17:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17991275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyOfTheOldWorld/pseuds/LadyOfTheOldWorld
Summary: Five months later, and Koori's breaking faster than ever before.





	Wither

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mercyandmagic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercyandmagic/gifts).



> Please don't do this, if you ever find yourself in this situation, dear readers. This is NOT how you should deal with it. Please keep yourselves safe.

It’s early October, when Ui Koori wakes from a fitful sleep.

At first, he isn’t sure what wakes him, tiredness weighing heavily on his mind and body. He hasn’t been sleeping well, not since May, not since Hairu d – since the _Rose Extermination Operation_. It’s pathetic that he can’t even _think_ about what happened, but it’s the only way that he gets through the day, the only way he gets any sleep at all. Of course, that isn’t the _only_ thing he’s been doing his best to ignore since then, but – _oh_. With awareness comes sight and smell and feeling; with awareness, he realizes what woke him. It’s as sudden and painful as being unexpectedly stabbed, which is truthfully a morbidly apt metaphor. He doesn’t even need to move or look to know that the sheets below him are soaked in blood and sweat, his nose just as sharp as any other omega’s. Senses flooded with the situation at hand, his constant exhaustion takes a backseat for the first time in five months. Even so, it takes him longer than it likely should to respond to the situation.

For a few moments, he simply lies there, body screaming and mind at war with itself. Well, perhaps itself isn’t quite the correct term. Depression, self-loathing, and passive suicidality aren’t native to his brain, after all, but even then he’s too listless to really find a better term for it. Realistically, Koori knows he should call Misao, but even with their sibling-like bond he knows he won’t. He tries to tell himself it’s because he can’t deal with the older omega lecturing him right now – hardly sleeping, living on coffee and cigarettes wouldn’t be healthy even just for himself – and while that's true, it has nothing to do with why he doesn’t reach for his phone to call her. Though partially to do with his desire to stop existing being stronger now than ever, even that isn’t the real root of the problem at hand. That said, even now he can’t bring himself to think about it, so he does what he’s become so skilled at in the last months, and pushes it away.

Eventually – it could have been minutes or hours, and he wouldn’t have even known – the Special Class Investigator manages to will himself to move. Numbly he drags himself up into a sitting position, aware of but not caring about the blood drying to the inside of his thighs and staining his pajama bottoms, before managing to force himself out of bed. With his sense of time completely shot, it could take only another few minutes or even another few hours to strip the sheets off his bed to (try to) avoid the blood soaking through and staining the mattress irreparably. Once that’s been taken care of, somehow quickly enough that he probably won’t need a new mattress after all, Koori realizes that he still needs to make his way from his bedroom to the bathroom. It takes almost more effort than he has in him to make the stupidly short trek, and by the time he reaches his destination sheets in hand, he’s shaking and his dark apartment is spinning around him.

Of course, that’s when he realizes he’s still bleeding. Not quickly enough that he’ll need to scrub his floors along with washing his sheets, but still heavily enough that he’ll definitely need to throw out the pants he’s currently wearing. He hardly registers making it into the bathroom, tossing his sheets into the laundry hamper, or even when he begins to strip himself of the loose cotton shirt and pants he wears to sleep. Only the pain is constant. That said, catching his reflection in the mirror above the sink and counter brings him back to reality in the same moment as time seems to stop. Standing in a silver shaft of moonlight, a ghost stares back at him from inside the glass. Dark hair hangs limp to razor-sharp shoulders, dead violet eyes peering out from a hollow face with black shadows forever bruised below them. Ice-blue veins show under snow-pale skin stretched over bones protruding like knives. A chest usually bound flat casts a shadow equal to that of his stark ribcage.

The only hint of life left in his body is also the reason why he’s still sluggishly bleeding as he stares at himself. A small swell sits between jutting hipbones, both just as easily hidden as the breasts below his collarbones with a chest binder and layers of clothing. As if detached from his body and its movements, Koori watches one bone-thin hand come up to find the swell, watches it press down. Pain lances through him at the action, once more breaking his dream-like state. Dazedly he turns from the mirror, only half-aware of reaching for the knobs of the shower. Stepping into the tub makes blackness swim at the edges of his vision, so that he has to lean against the wall and slide down it into a sitting position to avoid passing out on his feet. He knows the water’s hot – probably too hot – can smell the steam and see the way it makes his nearly blue skin begin to flush, but can hardly feel it. It’s just as distant and unreal as most things in his life, these days.

Slowly, he brings his legs up to his chest, bone-thin arms wrapping around them as his chin settles on his knees. It makes the pain worse, and sort of defeats the purpose of sitting in the shower in the first place, but the omega doesn’t care. There’s no point to anything, not after what happened. Not without _her_ , not without the only person he ever learned to love. Listlessly, in spite of the action pressing his thighs even closer against the flesh of his chest, his right hand comes up to press painfully thin fingers just below the left side of his jaw. The pulse in his veins stutters frantically, but he isn’t trying to see if he’s still alive. Far from it, in fact; the action brings to mind a memory. Sometime at the end of April, the night that resulted in this very situation, she had pressed her teeth hard against this part of his throat. Despite his begging, it had been her way of reminding him of their agreement. She wasn’t going to bite him, wasn’t going to _claim_ him, that night or any other. Koori hardly registers when he starts to cry.

Nothing matters without Hairu – not even the fact that he's miscarrying their little ones.


End file.
